Dental Services: West Dorset
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase the number of NHS orthodontist appointments available in West Dorset constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock
The responsibility for commissioning specialised orthodontic services is delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. For the West Dorset constituency, this is the NHS Dorset ICB. In order to support the ICBs in the execution of their duties, NHS England has published a number of documents, including a clinical policy to support the commissioning of orthodontic activity, which is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/clinical-standards-for-dental-specialties-orthodontics/
More widely, the Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract with the sector, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.
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